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still hungry after all these years

Mess Around

Back from vacation, wake up the next morning and find there’s very little in the fridge. So for lunch, I get to do my favorite thing, mess around with odds and ends of food. That’s where this post is going, so if you don’t care, bail here.

I went to the pantry and found a 4-ounce package of crab meat. Hmm. The sell-by date was 2009, so it seemed safe. I had an onion. There were some grape tomatoes in the refrigerator. What else … mustard. French’s Yellow Mustard.

I chopped up the onion until I had a pile about as big as the pile of crab and mixed them together. Then I folded in some mustard and cut the tomatoes in half; there was just enough tomato spillage to keep the mixture juicy. Tasted it, added some salt, looked around. I saw a dusty jar of chopped jalapenos, which i don’t remember buying. What the heck, in they went. A little more, maybe … yeah. Definitely. The crab was there, not overwhelmed, and the mix was bright and tasty.

Back in wine class, one of the instructors said our taste memories don’t have the quality of sight or sound memories, and are almost not useful. May be true with wine, but with food I think you can look at something and think about how it tastes, and use that to combine flavors.

Next time on Messing Around, my attempt to duplicate Newman’s Light Lime Vinagrette.